


Mad Scientists Anonymous

by GrumpyGhostOwl



Category: Kagaku Ninja Tai Gatchaman & Related Fandoms
Genre: Humor, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 19:14:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11447304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GrumpyGhostOwl/pseuds/GrumpyGhostOwl
Summary: The team mentors attend a support group meeting. Co-authored by ElectricWhite from Gatchamania, who does not have an AO3 account [said GrumpyGhostOwl, with a slightly reproachful glance in EW's general direction].





	1. Foreword

For a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mindset, it’s difficult to watch any of the incarnations of _Gatchaman_ without wondering why the team mentor isn’t flipping through the real estate pages looking for a bargain on a crumbling castle with a nearby village populated with superstitious peasants and a conveniently-located highly-flammable windmill within lurching distance.  
  
Because the team mentors are all clearly as mad as a box of frogs.  
  
And they’re allowed to do something that _they_ call science.  
  
It’s fairly obvious to anyone who has struggled to stay awake while trying to memorise bits of the periodic table or fought off the inevitable headaches that come with trying to understand _why_ , if we’ve managed to build a spacecraft that travels at close to the speed of light, an astronaut should need to use a torch rather than just turn on the bloody cabin lighting, that whatever it is the mentors are doing, it isn’t science.  
  
It would appear that what they’re doing is Mad Science. You know, the stuff with the shiny fizzy Tesla coils, Jacob’s ladders, lightning rods, the obligatory hunchbacked assistant and the odd shambling abomination.  
  
So, what happens when the team realises that their mentor is, as mentioned, as mad as the proverbial carton of amphibians?  
  
How about an intervention? And possibly a support group, where you can go along to discuss your issues with raising the dead, have a nice cup of tea, a biscuit* and a bit of a sing?  
  
To find out, dear reader, please read on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Or a cookie, if you must.


	2. The Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The meeting is called to (dis)order and we meet the attendees.

On top of an incredibly high hill overlooking a nondescript village in a region that could easily pass itself off as Transylvania was an ancient castle that could have been used for stock footage for every mad scientist movie made before 1965. Within this castle was a moderately-sized room with rich tapestries on the walls and flickering, flaming torches providing light. In the middle of this room was a circle of metal folding chairs – the same type of folding chairs favoured by church youth groups worldwide.   
  
Every chair was filled; some of the attendees looked like ordinary people while others looked like parodies of scientists. One man who looked like he was the underachieving younger brother of Bill Nye straightened his bow tie and cleared his throat.  
  
"My name is Gill Nye," he said, "I've been 'madding' for almost 30 years now."  
  
The others muttered the standard, "Hi, Gill," greeting.  
  
Gill continued: "I'd like to officially open this week's meeting of Mad Scientists Anonymous. Any seconds?"  
  
"Second." a woman who was the spitting image of a gender-flipped Albert Einstein said.  
  
“Okay,” Gill said, “before we start the sharing, I had an e-mail from Victor yesterday. He’s enjoying his vacation in Switzerland with Mary and Percy. He’s sorting out a lot of his creator issues and says he’s making great progress. Said to say ‘hi’ to everyone. Great to hear that he’s doing so well. Now, would anyone like to start?”  
   
Several near-identical men in grey suits were sitting in a little cluster. They exchanged glances before one of them cleared his throat and spoke.  
   
“Uh… hi,” he began, a little hesitantly. “My name’s Chief Anderson.”  
   
The others – with the exception of the men in grey, who were clearly first-timers – chorused, “Hi, uh…”  
   
“We generally go by first names,” Gill said. “What’s your first name?”  
   
Anderson grimaced. “It’s ‘Chief.’ I had the opposite of hippie parents.”  
   
There was an untidy chorus of, “Hi, Chief.”  
   
“So…” Anderson continued, “I’ve been ‘madding’ for… um… well, about thirty years or so. Certainly since college. My adopted kids staged an intervention recently and I agreed to come along to these meetings to try and work out a few things.”  
   
“That’s a positive step,” Gill said. “We all started from the same place, Chief.”  
   
“I’d been on the wagon for a while,” Anderson recounted. “I swore after building a giant Archimedes Burning Glass that I’d stop, but then…” he took a deep breath and hung his head. “Then I built the giant magnet.”  
   
The other men in grey made vaguely sympathetic noises.  
  
"That was _you_ ?!" the woman who looked like Einstein cried, "That was a work of _art_!" She noticed a few icy stares. "Oh, yeah. I'm Alberta. I've been 'madding' for 12 years."  
  
"Hi, Alberta," came the chorus.  
  
"While I'm sure Chief appreciates the fact that others have, uh, _noticed_ his endeavours," Gill gently but sternly interjected, "we aren't here to _encourage_ , uh –"  
  
"The kind of behaviour that causes mobs of people with pitchforks and torches to chase you down!" a basic nerd – complete with pocket protectors – finished.  
  
"Thanks, Mervyn." Gill replied.  
  
"Sorry." Alberta muttered, casting her eyes to the floor. Just then there was a booming clap of thunder and a flash of lightning that could be seen in this windowless room.  
  
"Um, sorry," Gill said, "we've got some workmen trying to calibrate our Accenting Thunderstorm Effect. Anyway," Gill continued. "What happened with the magnet, Chief?"  
   
 Anderson shrugged. “It worked. We saved the world, there was an Earth-shattering ‘Kaboom!’ and I climbed back on the wagon. I’ve been doing pretty well, but I keep getting these… flashes, I guess you’d call them, of a giant centrifuge kind of thing.” He cast a quick glance at his dopplegangers. “I think it’s something to do with cross-continuum morphic resonance.”  
   
“Now, here,” lisped a hunchbacked man whose face was covered in stitches. “There’th no need for that kind of language!”  
   
Gill held up a hand. “I think we can let it go this time, Igor.”  
   
“Yeth, Marthter – I mean, Yeth, Gill,” Igor said. The people next to him took out handkerchiefs and wiped off the spit.  
   
One of the other men in grey raised a tentative hand and spoke in heavily-accented English. “I think the centrifuge was my fault.”  
   
“Oh?” Gill smiled encouragingly. “Would you like to introduce yourself to the group?”  
   
“Nambu Kozabouro Hakase,” the man said. “You can call me Kozabouro.”  
   
There was a ragged chorus of greetings and the members of the group watched with some interest.  
   
“So, Kozabouro,” Gill said gently. “What makes you feel responsible for Chief’s flashes of… inspiration?”  
   
“It’s like he said,” Nambu explained. “We’re all iterations across a group of parallel universes – even him.” Nambu pointed at a man wearing an outlandish suit who sat with the others. He looked similar to the other four but was different enough that he stood out from the rest. “I’m the original, and I’ve been madding for most of my life. The others sometimes pick up on stuff that hasn’t made it across into their universes, and I’m told it can be disconcerting. We all agreed to come here and talk it over in a safe environment after Chief’s kids got concerned.” Nambu folded his arms. “Mine would never have intervened like that. Even after I got shot in the head, all they did was bury me.”  
   
Igor brightened up at this. “You’ve been rethurrected, Doctor?”  
   
“Yes,” Nambu said. “Fortunately it was before Count Egobossler blew up my grave, or I would have been geography.”  
   
“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘history,’” Gill said after a moment.  
   
“Not with the amount of C4 that shit-head was using,” Nambu retorted.  
   
"Just out of curiosity," Chief Anderson said to the gathering of mirror images, "do any of you have to work with an especially syrupy, annoyingly chirpy robot?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Sorry."  
  
A silent shake of the head finished off the negative responses. "Damn." Anderson said under his breath.  
  
"Are _you_ working on a robot?" Alberta asked a bit timidly, "Or is it one you've already finished?"

  
Anderson cast a baleful glare in Alberta's direction, then shuffled his chair an inch or so closer to Nambu's. "I don't want to talk about it," he snarled. "That thing is an abomin-"  
  
"Ah!" Gill interjected, holding up a hand. "We don't use that word here."  
  
Anderson subsided somewhat. "It's a commercial QTL model," he said, "and I loathe it with every fibre of my being."  
  
"I built a robot once," a young man with long gangly limbs and neatly combed dark hair said. He was wearing an 'Incredible Hulk' t-shirt. "It was pretty good, but then my arch-enemy's robot destroyed it. Damn that Kripke!"  
  
On cue, the thunder rolled.  
  
"Hey, Gill," the young man said. "I think they've just about got it."  
  
"Yes, thank you, Sheldon," Gill said.  
  
"Oh, yes, I forgot. I'm Doctor Sheldon Cooper, and I'm not crazy. I just come here for the Tim Tams."  
  
"The whats?" Nambu asked. "I don't know the translation..."  
  
"The Tim Tams," Sheldon explained. "Oh, you haven't lived until you've tried the Tim Tams. It's almost impossible to get them where I come from, and it's way easier to build an interdimensional portal and travel across realities than it is to try and deal with Australian Border Control."  
  
"Thank you, Sheldon!" Gill said. "We'll break out the Tim Tams and the coffee _after_ the meeting."  
  
"How is that young man not crazy?" Nambu whispered to Anderson.  
  
"Beats me," Anderson whispered back. "Kid sounds like he's one lab accident away from becoming a supervillain."  
  
"Moving right along," Gill said. "Would anyone else like to introduce themselves?"  
  
A snowy-haired Asian man stood. "Hello, I'm Masaaki Kaku...yes, I _am_ related to Michio... Anyway, I've been 'madding' since I was six years old. I built a particle accelerator in the basement because I wanted to create an antimatter bomb."  
  
"Hello, Masaaki!"  
  
Andy Angstrom, Neil Bohr, and Jabreel deGrasse Tyson introduced themselves before one final scientist stood. "Hello," he said in a thick Brooklyn accent, "I'm Yitzhak Asimov. I've been 'madding' almost my entire life, and I'm here because of a joke that's gotten seriously out-of-hand."  
  
"Really?" Gill sounded intensely interested.  
  
"Yes," Yitzhak answered, "I was pretending to be a group of Russian hackers while breaking into several high-level government computer systems..."  
  
The gang of doppelgangers leaned in, appearing eager to learn more.  
  
"You mean," Alberta sounded astonished, " _you're_ the one responsible for influencing the elections in America?"  
  
"Yes," Yitzhak cast his eyes to the floor," but that was _not_ what I intended."  
  
"And the school board riots in Mexico City?" Masaaki asked.  
  
"Yup."  
  
"And the sudden rise of incidents of cold poutine in Canada?" Jabreel added.  
  
"That too."  
  
Andy raised his hand before speaking. "What about the edible Vegemite discovered in Australia?"   
  
"Well, actually," the fake Russian hacker replied, "I think _that_ was just a freak of nature."   
  
A clap of thunder rattled the room.  
  
"Ah, Yitzhak," Gill chimed in, "we don't use the 'F-word', either."  
  
The mad scientists settled back in their chairs and exchanged a few surreptitious glances.  
  
Nambu studied his dopplegangers for a moment, correctly judged the matching set of calculating expressions for what they were, then raised his hand.  
  
"Yes, Kozabouro?" Gill prompted.  
  
"Gill," Nambu ventured carefully, "I think now might be a good moment to mention the group's policy on recruitment."  
  
...  
  
"I don't see what's wrong with _employing_ mad scientists," Chief Anderson said. "They come in handy. Everyone has to make their own choices and I can't be everywhere at once. You guys only have one planet to worry about. I've got an entire interplanetary civilisation to deal with!"  
  
"Yeah," the man in the garishly striped suit – who had also introduced himself as Kozabouro Nambu – said, "and it sounds like it's a civilisation that should be wearing its underpants on its own head."  
  
"You can talk," Anderson retorted. "You got your tech from 'friendly aliens'" – he made finger quotes in the air as he spoke – "and you look like you raided the costume department from _Priscilla, Queen of the Desert_."  
  
"At least I didn't send my team flying around the galaxy on the say-so of a psychotic robot!"  
  
Anderson was on his feet. "Do NOT mention the robot!"  
  
"Guys!" Gill said. "Come on, now. We're all here to support each other, remember?" He glanced at Doctors Brighthead and Keane, who appeared to be sharing a large box of movie popcorn, and his expression darkened. "Okay, you two, did you bring that popcorn with you, or did you access hammerspace?"  
  
There was a low, collective gasp from the other group members.  
  
"If you guys can't keep to the rules," Gill said, "I'll have to ask you to leave. This is your first and final warning."  
  
"Especially after that wardrobe crack!" Jabreel chimed in, "That's _so_ insulting to the wardrobe people from _Priscilla_!" There was a flash of lightning with no thunder.  
  
" _Anyway_ ," Alberta interrupted, "I was wondering if you guys could help me with an issue."  
  
"That's why Mad Sci Anon's here." Gill replied in a calmer, more soothing tone than a moment before, "What's on your mind?"  
  
"Well..." She seemed to struggle a bit. "what's the difference between being a mad scientist and just a scientist? I mean, where do you draw the line?"  
  
"Well," Sheldon replied, "I've been told that trying to take over the world is a reliable determining factor –"  
  
"Yeah," Alberta answered, "but that's pretty obvious! But what about the _not_ -so-obvious?"  
  
"What do you mean?" Gill asked.  
  
"Take what Chief did – he used a giant magnet to save the world from a ball bearing on mega-doses of steroids!"  
  
"I suppose he could have done something seriously off the deep end," Yitzhak said, "like use a giant pair of chopsticks to snatch the ball bearing out of the air..."  
  
"Oh," Sheldon became more animated as he spoke, "but then he would have had to build a giant robot to hold the chopsticks –"  
  
"NO ROBOTS!" Chief cried.  
  
Yitzhak turned to Sheldon. "I thought you were only here for the Tim Tams."  
  
"Usually the conversation is incredibly _boring_!" was the reply. "If it isn't, 'My lab assistant was struck by lightning when I was trying to re-animate a corpse,' it's, 'My creation tried to kill me,' or, 'An angry mob with pitchforks burned down my lab!' _Blah, blah, blah_!"  
  
" _Thank you, Sheldon_ ," Gill said pointedly.  
  
Sheldon beamed, oblivious to the undertones. "Oh, you're welcome, Gill," he said. "This really is one of the most entertaining meetings we've had in a while."  
  
The almost-doppleganger in the striped suit regarded his colleagues with an air of superiority. "As Chief Anderson so kindly pointed out, I got my tech from friendly aliens, so I'm not quite as... shall we say, bat-shit crazy as the rest of this crew."  
  
"Yeah, your mom just dresses you that way," Doctor Keane muttered under his breath.  
  
" _As I was saying_ ," the second Nambu continued, "I think maybe size matters."  
  
The dopplegangers exchanged confused glances.  
  
"Look," the second Nambu reasoned, "nobody gives you a second glance if you work with regular-sized magnets, right?"  
  
"Oooooh!" Sheldon exclaimed. "Unless you're tying them to homing pigeons!"  
  
"What?" Anderson asked, his voice flat.  
  
"Homing pigeons can detect the Earth's magnetic field," Sheldon explained, "so if you attach little magnets to them, they get lost. In theory, anyway. It's all ornithology, which isn't _real_ science, but it could be quite fascinating to watch all the pigeons, flying around confused."  
  
" _Thank you, Sheldon_ ," Gill said through clenched teeth.  
  
"You're welcome, Gill," Sheldon said.  
  
"Maybe Beau Brummell here has a point," Anderson conceded. "Scale could be an indicator."  
  
"Excuse me?" the second Nambu said. "Did you just admit that I was right?"  
  
"Don't let it go to your head," Anderson retorted. "I'm not about to ask you out for dinner and a movie."  
  
"There'th altho the laughter," Igor put in helpfully. "A good mad thientitht _alwayth_ hath a jolly good maniacal laugh, and if you can time it in with the thundershtormth, well, then you _know_ you've got a good 'un... er... I mean, a really mad thientitht. Then, if they inthitht on being addrethed ath 'Marthter' or 'Mithtreth,' that'th altho a bit of a giveaway."  
  
"Tesla coils," Doctor Brighthead said. "I get these... _urges_ to buy Tesla coils."  
  
The other dopplegangers made sympathetic noises and patted Brighthead's shoulders.  
  
"Lightning rods," Keane confessed. "With me, it's lightning rods."  
  
"And remember what we alwath thay here at Mad Thientithtth Anonymouth!" Igor said. "You never, _ever_ bring a thovel to a funeral!"  
  
The room fell silent as the Mad Sci Anon members exchanged confused looks.  
  
"Jutht thaying..."  
  
"We appreciate the thought, Igor." Gill said, placing a sympathetic hand on his back while avoiding the hump. "Say, did you remember to clean the Jacob's Ladders in the lab?"  
  
"Oh, heaventh, I knew I wath forgetting thomething!"  
  
"Off you go then. Just remember to shut off the power before touching the bits where electricity arcs, okay?"  
  
"Yeth math–uh, _thir_!" Igor shuffled off to fulfil his task. The other scientists pulled out handkerchiefs and dabbed themselves dry.  
  
"I've lost track of what we were talking about." Andy Angstrom said after a moment of silence.  
  
"Something about putting magnets on homing pigeons..." Masaaki replied.  
  
"Say, that gives me an idea!" Jabreel cried, "I wonder if there are magnets strong enough to pull flying bullets off their trajectory while being small enough to be carried by pigeons."  
  
"Oh, I think I see where you're going with that!" Yitzhak chimed in, "We implant the super-magnets in the pigeons and release them in high-crime areas. Then, whenever there's a drive-by, the magnets pull the bullets away from the victim!"  
  
"Uh, gentlemen –" Gill sounded a warning tone.  
  
"But think about how many lives we could save!" Alberta cried. There was a slight rumble of thunder.  
  
"It wouldn't work," Anderson said.  
  
"How do you know?" Alberta demanded.  
  
"We've kinda... done some work with birds. Think about it," Anderson reasoned. "Pigeons _flock_. If you've got super-magnetic pigeons..."  
  
"Oh!" Sheldon exclaimed. "They'd all stick together in a great big pigeon-ball!"  
  
Jabreel nodded. "And then you get all the animal-rights people protesting outside the lab," he concluded.  
  
Nambu had one hand on his chin and appeared to be trying to work something out. "How many pigeons would it take to reach critical mass?" he wondered aloud.  
  
Gill frowned. "We're not here to figure out how to build pigeon-weapons!" he warned.  
  
"Oh, no, no, not me," Nambu protested. "It's the kind of shit Galactor gets up to all the time. Part of my job is to know things like this so that the heroes can save the day in the Nick of Time."  
  
"He's right," Anderson said.  
  
"Absolutely," Dr Brighthead agreed. "The whole Nick of Time thing's in our mission statement."  
  
"I thought your mission statement was something to do with the greater good," the second Nambu said.  
  
"So, wait..." Gill said. "You guys are... heroes?"  
  
"Mentors," Nambu corrected. "Mentors to the heroes. We're the good guys. Why do you ask?"  
  
Several of the other scientists shifted their chairs away by a few inches.  
  
"Uh... just for the purposes of clarity, that's all." Gill looked sternly around the room. "Remember, people, _everyone_ is welcome at Mad Scientists Anonymous."  
  
"Um, just out of curiosity," Mervyn's voice squeaked as he played with a pocket protector, "what opinion do each of you have toward an unappreciated boy genius?"  
  
Several groans filled the room.  
  
"Melvin –" Alberta whined.  
  
"Mervyn."  
  
"Whatever! We already know about the time you accidentally –"  
  
"It wasn't an accident!"  
  
"–created a thermonuclear device using a box of crayons, some paste, and some of the school cafeteria's mystery meat when you were six!"  
  
"Mervyn," Gill intervened, "I think it's safe to say you won't see an angry mob with pitchforks any time soon. And I believe we've gone a bit off topic..."  
  
"Maybe we could use rats." Sheldon said with a thoughtful tone in his voice, "I mean, since the urban areas are infested with the vermin, why not make the nasty little beggars earn their keep?"  
  
Gill let out a moan as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Then came a very loud clap of thunder.  
  
"Yes!" a cry drifted out from the direction of the laboratory. "It's alive! It's ALIVE!"  
  
"Uh-oh," Gill said. "Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated."  
  
A shuffling, scuttling sound had the mad scientists lifting their feet up off the floor as something that might once have been white but was now a slightly singed colour raced into the room, trailing bits of burning paper. The thing looked as though it might have been roughly squarish in shape and smelled strongly of grilled cheese.  
  
"There you are!" Igor – at least the speaker _resembled_ Igor – exclaimed. Moving smoothly, with neither limp nor hunch, Igor netted the escapee in one neat motion. "Sorry, chaps," he said, with perfect diction. "Gill must have left a cheese sandwich on the slab. I'd just finished cleaning the Jacob's ladders when the lightning struck." Igor smiled cheerfully. His hair was smoking and his lab coat was smouldering slightly.  
  
The cheese sandwich struggled and hissed in the net.  
  
Alberta, who was staring wide-eyed, began fanning herself with one hand.  
  
The captive sandwich snarled and snapped.  
  
"Um, Igor..." Gill waved at his assistant.  
  
Igor frowned, puzzled, then glanced down at his feet, felt at his shoulders with his free hand, then smacked himself in the forehead. "Not again!" he exclaimed. "I'm going to have to get some better rubber-soled shoes! Honestly! If this keeps up, I'm going to get chucked out of the Igor Union!" Grumbling, he stalked out of the lab with the protesting sandwich still in its net.  
  
Chief Anderson craned his neck to watch Igor and the sandwich depart. "You know what?" he declared. "After seeing that, I think I'm cured."  
  
The second Nambu poked Anderson in the arm. "It wasn't a _ham_ sandwich." At Anderson's blank look, he shrugged. "Cured? Ham? Sandwich? Oh, never mind!"  
  
"I'm definitely cured," Anderson said. "I never want to see another lightning rod again. Ever."  
  
"How do the rest of you feel?" Gill asked.  
  
"Hold on," Sheldon cried, "what about the rats?"  
  
"It won't work." Nambu replied.  
  
"That idea has the same problem as the pigeons." Dr Brighthead added.  
  
"So," Gill said, "does this mean we've concluded this meeting?"  
  
"Well," the second Nambu chimed in, "perhaps we could put our collective talents toward helping Igor with his unique problem..."  
  
"Of course!" the original Nambu cried. He then turned to Gill. "By any chance, do you have a really big centrifuge lying around?"  
  



	3. Two Weeks Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One day at a time...

"Arf! Arf-arf!" The cheese sandwich bounced around, wagging its wrappers and making feints at the broom Igor was pushing around the meeting room. Yet another meeting had degenerated into a riot, and he needed to get the room sorted in time for tomorrow's Vitally Challenged Support Group* get-together.  
  
Igor glanced up at the sound of approaching footfalls to see five young people dressed in bright costumes striding toward him. Their apparent leader, dressed in white, glared at him through a blue visor with a curve like a hawk's bill.  
  
"Okay, you... uh... Um... Hey, man, are you okay?" the young man asked.  
  
"I am perfectly well, thank you, thir," Igor replied. "May I help you with thomething?"  
  
The young man appeared to recover his aplomb and took up an accusatory stance. "What did you do to Chief Anderson?" he demanded.  
  
"Do, thir? He attended a meeting of Mad Thientithtth Anonymouth, claimed to have been cured, and left uth a thane man, thir."  
  
Mark took a step back, retrieved a handkerchief from a belt pouch and cleaned his visor.   
  
Jason made to step closer to Igor, then changed his mind and put a hand on Mark's shoulder in a show of support. "When we left him," he recounted, "he was gibbering under his desk."  
  
Igor shrugged. It was a very expressive shrug. "Can't think why, thir. Wath there any kind of trigger? A thunderthtorm, perhapth?"  
  
Princess let out a scream and leaped into Tiny Harper's arms.  
  
The entire G-Force team tensed. Mark drew his sonic boomerang and pointed with his free hand at the strange whitish creature capering at Igor's feet. The thing panted and barked happily.   
  
There was an odd smell like grilled cheese.  
  
"What. Is. That?" Mark demanded.  
  
"Don't be alarmed," Igor said. "Thith ith Thpot."  
  
"Thpot?" Princess echoed.  
  
"Not Thpot, _Thpot_!" Igor said. "He'th quite harmleth. I'd have him on a lead, but collarth keep thlipping off. He hathn't got a neck, you thee."  
  
"Um... " Jason ventured, "how long have you had... er... Spot?"  
  
"Two weekth, sir. He came to life the very night your friend wath here."  
  
"I think that explains it," Mark concluded.  
  
"Yeah," Tiny said, setting Princess down on the floor. "We just got back from a mission, it was late and the mess hall at Camp Parker was closed, so I suggested I make us some grilled cheese sandwiches."  
  
"That's right," Princess recalled. "There was a storm developing at the time, we heard a crash of thunder, and Chief Anderson ran screaming from the room."  
  
"I'd say our mystery's solved," Mark declared. "Let's go home, team."  
  
  
  
  
  
* They don't use the U-word.  
  
  



End file.
